I cannot think of a single time that I have learned something and it was not horrifically painful. And I have joked that if it does not hurt, I am not going to remember. So when I was studying as a kid, I used to have a rubber band on my wrist and I would snap my wrist with it so I would remember what I was learning. Negative reinforcement of some sort. It worked. I wish I could say I understood why some people can get a pat on the back and say, you know what, that did not work out so well, try this instead? And they go, okay, and then they go and try again. Where with me, I have to get hit with a baseball bat and said, no, that is wrong, do it again.
That rubber band says a lot about me, I know.
Because it reveals that somewhere very early on, my system formed an association between:
pain = importance,
pain = attention,
pain = retention,
pain = transformation.
Not consciously, necessarily.
But structurally.
And once a nervous system learns: βIf it matters, it hurts,β life starts organising itself around intensity thresholds.
Gentle correction feels too faint.
Subtle feedback gets filtered out.
Mild discomfort barely registers.
So the psyche keeps waiting for the metaphorical baseball bat because historically that was what reliably broke through the noise strongly enough to create change.
I do not think that this makes me defective.
I think it means my nervous system became calibrated to high-impact learning environments.
Sometimes because:
- emotions in the household were intense
- consequences were inconsistent
- love and pain were intertwined
- attention arrived through crisis
- survival required heightened alertness
- emotional signals had to be loud to matter
A system like that adapts.
It learns: βWhispers are not actionable. Only alarms count.β
Which means a calm internal voice saying: βHey, maybe restβ may barely penetrate.
But collapse?
Burnout?
Heartbreak?
Existential crisis?
Those register immediately.
And after enough years, you start unconsciously believing: βThis is just how I learn.β
I may remember painful lessons more vividly.
That does not necessarily mean pain is the best or only teacher available to me.
It may simply be the teacher my system currently notices most reliably.
That is different.
Because imagine someone raised around constant fire alarms.
Eventually they stop noticing ordinary sounds.
Everything meaningful becomes associated with emergency volume.
But that does not mean quiet sounds are meaningless.
It means the nervous system lost sensitivity to subtler signals.
Perhaps my next phase may involve relearning lower-volume information.
Not because I have become weak or soft.
But because my system no longer requires catastrophe to authorise change.
This is a big deal – and difficult.
Because at first, gentleness can feel unreal.
Insufficient. Forgettable.
Sometimes I think: βThis cannot possibly count as growth because no one emotionally exploded.β
But healthy development often looks deeply uncinematic.
A person pauses before reacting.
A boundary gets set early.
Fatigue is respected before collapse.
An intuition is listened to before disaster.
A relationship ends before becoming traumatic.
Rest happens before burnout.
No baseball bat. Just awareness.
That can feel almost boring to a nervous system accustomed to transformation-through-impact.
But boring is sometimes where healing begins.
Not lifelessness.
Not numbness.
Just absence of emergency.
I wonder whether my intensity makes it harder for me to trust small corrections because my inner world is already operating at such high voltage.
A tiny adjustment can feel absurdly inadequate compared to the scale of what I am used to surviving.
Like: βYou are telling me THIS tiny realisation is enough? Where is the dramatic orchestral collapse scene?β
But human beings are not actually supposed to require annihilation for evolution.
And perhaps my children are part of what is showing me this.
Because when you love children, you start realising: βI do not want them to require devastation in order to grow.β
And once that truth becomes visible for them, it slowly becomes harder not to extend it toward yourself too.
Not all wisdom needs blood sacrifice attached to it.
